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Virendra Sehwag, after smashing a superb 119 against the Deccan Chargers was honoured with the orange cap, his first in the IPL. In spite of being part of one of the all time worst teams in the IPL, he has single handedly won them all their matches, scoring close to 70% of their runs in the match vs Deccan Chargers.

In the last few weeks Sehwag has been very critical of his performances and it appears the burden of captaincy has actually improved him. It makes you think, what if Sehwag had entered a Tendulkar-less team , would India’s expectation of him have changed? When Sachin comes to bat people expect him to carry the Indian innings, scoring a century, when Sehwag comes to bat all you expect him to do is entertain.

Sportsmen like other performers adapt their style according to the expectations of fans and teams, Dravid was a far more aggressive player when he started. Similarly, Sehwag entered into the fray with one of the world’s all time best batting combinations on paper. The likes of Ganguy, Dravid and Tendullkar have all scored more than 10000 runs in ODIs, hence it wasn’t really expected of Sehwag to stay and save the team’s grace, all he was expected to do was attack and in 10 years he has now become a totally different batsman. Sehwag’s technique is top notch, if he settles it won’t make a difference whether you are a Wasim Akram or a Douglas Hondo! He is often criticised for his lack of temperament but you don’t score two triple centuries just like that (something no other Indian Test batsman has achieved). Overtime plenty have criticized him as irresponsible but that is just wrong. You can be responsible only when you are given responsibility and Sehwag with his orange cap has shown that. He now makes an effort to at least stay for 10-15 overs and a settled Sehwag is utter menace to bowlers he is almost unstoppable.

But could Sehwag have been as good as Sachin?

by Shashank Tripathi
A management student and a bored cricket crazy Indian ;)

3 comments:

Really interesting suggestion. A parallel is Yuvraj in the World Cup. most of the career he has been never asked to carry the team with greats playing around him. Now with a relatively inexperienced Middle Order and out of form Dhoni he was asked to bat sensibly and he carried the burden of the team very well.

Sehwag still had Sachin at the other end so he could still play freely.